Christopher Liddell Is Front-Runner to Become Trump’s Top Economic Adviser

Christopher P. Liddell, the White House’s director of strategic initiatives, was a top executive at Microsoft and General Motors.Credit
Alex Brandon/Associated Press

President Trump is strongly considering Christopher P. Liddell, a White House official who was an executive at Microsoft and General Motors, to succeed his departing top economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Trump has not made a firm decision, those briefed on the process said. But Mr. Liddell, the White House’s director of strategic initiatives, is currently seen as a front-runner to replace Mr. Cohn as the director of the National Economic Council, they said.

The president has always wanted a prominent business figure to oversee the council, according to people who have spoken with him. But his aides, mindful of the difficulties they have had attracting people from outside the White House, have been looking internally, and a successor could be named as early as next week.

Shahira Knight, a well-respected deputy to Mr. Cohn who was crucial to the legislation revamping the tax code, had been the favored candidate of Mr. Cohn, some White House officials and several Republican congressional aides. But Ms. Knight, who prefers a lower profile, was uninterested, officials said.

Since joining the administration in early 2017, Mr. Liddell has worked closely with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, on efforts to streamline and update some government functions. That includes the way the government buys technology or the services it offers citizens online.

Mr. Liddell has his detractors, both in the administration and outside it. Some critics say his record in the administration does not match the prominence of the post for which he is now being considered, noting privately that the Office of American Innovation, where Mr. Liddell is a key member of a team led by Mr. Kushner, has a thin record of achievement.

Others noted that Mr. Liddell had a role in selecting personnel during the transition, an endeavor that has been widely perceived as subpar.

But as a former chief financial officer of Microsoft and General Motors, Mr. Liddell has the sort of experience that could fulfill the president’s interest in someone with a corporate résumé who is also known to his existing staff, according to the officials familiar with the discussions.

Mr. Liddell would also bring extensive management experience from his time in politics.

In 2012, he served as the executive director of Mitt Romney’s presidential transition team, where his job centered on process, not policy. During that time, Mr. Liddell revealed few policy preferences with his colleagues, though he was viewed as an effective supervisor.

Although Mr. Romney lost the presidential election, Mr. Liddell helped write a book on the team’s planning process, “Romney Readiness Project.” The book chafed some on the transition team, who had viewed Mr. Liddell as highly ambitious in the job, and saw the book as trying to claim more credit for the transition than he deserved.

Mr. Liddell’s background and public comments suggest that he could mimic Mr. Cohn’s role in the administration as an ambassador to the business community.

“We will deal with any businesses that are knowledgeable and can contribute in a way that we think is constructive on the agenda that we have,” Mr. Liddell told a conference of chief executives that The Wall Street Journal held in November. “The message I would give to people is, we’re not there to necessarily deal with every individual company’s every individual issue. That’s not us. We have multiple stakeholders that we need to address.”

“But businesses know that this is an administration that is receptive to feedback from business,” he added. “This is an administration that will listen to businesses of all natures, large and small, of any industry in thinking about policy frameworks.”

In a break from Mr. Cohn and business leaders, however, Mr. Liddell appears more sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s populist trade agenda. After Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, Mr. Liddell told a New Zealand journalist that “I think the days of unbridled free trade and unbridled free markets are over.”

“I worked in the private sector all my life, so I’m a believer in free markets, but not unbridled free markets,” Mr. Liddell said. “And we’ve had 30 years since the mid-’80s, both in New Zealand and here in the U.S. and globally, of basically free markets being driving the whole thinking, the whole rhetoric around governing. I think those days are over, personally. I think we’re going to go through a circular trend of a much more restrained free market.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 11, 2018, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Executive For Microsoft May Succeed Cohn in Role. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe